A man whose name and address was published as a gun owner in the Journal News, a New York newspaper, had his gun safe targeted by burglars over the weekend. Thankfully, the thieves failed to gain access to the guns and the homeowner wasn’t home when the burglars struck. New York State Senator Greg Ball is putting the blame directly where it belongs, on the Journal News:
“The Journal News has placed the lives of these folks at risk by creating a virtual shopping list for criminals and nut jobs,” said Ball. “If the connection is proven, this is further proof that these maps are not only an invasion of privacy but that they present a clear and present danger to law-abiding, private citizens.”
Ball is introducing legislation Monday to protect the names of New Yorkers who have legally obtained gun permits.
“Former convicts have already testified to the usefulness of the asinine Journal News ‘gun maps’ yet the reckless editors are evidently willing to roll the dice, gambling with the lives of innocent local homeowners,” Ball said.
The Affiliated Police Association of Westchester County said they plan to hold the newspaper accountable for any attacks on their residences of their 25,000 members.
Ball said the newspaper, whose parent company owns USA Today, is coddling terrorists.
“The same elitist eggheads who use their editorial page to coddle terrorists and criminals are now treating law abiding citizens like level three sexual predators,” he said. “This is not about the Second Amendment; these bills are simply about commonsense and personal privacy.
There’s nothing at all surprising about a lone newspaper stocked with Left-wingers who go off on a left-wing gun-control rampage that includes the targeting of law-abiding gun owners. This is who Leftists are. This is what Leftists do.
The real news here, is the deafening silence from the rest of the media.
When the idea of having sex offenders publicly register came about (Megan’s Law), for a number of reasons, the media engaged in a mature debate over whether or not notifying residents of a convicted sex offender living in their area was a good idea. And while I’m in favor of the law, I would also argue that this was a perfectly legitimate and necessary debate to have.
But nowhere are we seeing the elite media doing anything other than to ignore the Journal News treating law-abiding gun owners as though they’re sex offenders. The media simply wants to pretend it didn’t happen, and that there’s been no fallout. And it’s not just about the media protecting its own, either.
Whether it’s Morton Downey Jr. Piers Morgan, David Gregory, Soledad O’Brien, Joe Scarborough, or any one of the other MSNBC lunatics, this gun control push is really a manifestation of a cultural bigotry. The elite media sees law-abiding gun owners as mostly rural, male, white Republicans; and the media hates these people.
Had publishing the names of sex offenders brought about some kind of vigilante backlash against child rapists, you can bet the media would’ve gone ballistic over those “unintended consequences.” But rural, white, male, Republican gun owners…?
Whatever it is, they got it comin’.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC